


Entry Wound

by loopyhoopyfrood



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst, Flashfic challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 19:33:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14385639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopyhoopyfrood/pseuds/loopyhoopyfrood
Summary: There's a body on the ground, and Phryne is running towards him.





	Entry Wound

**Author's Note:**

> My attempt at the 2 hour flashfic challenge. I chose the prompt words 'perpendicular - aubergine - parrot', which resulted in this rather angsty drabble.

The dim lamplight means she can only just make out his body, lying perpendicular to the cloud canvased sky with arms spread in a mocking imitation of the last snapshot her eyes had taken of him. Then, he’d been slumbering safely in a cocoon of feathered quilts, ignorant of the world that awaited him upon his awakening. Now, his flesh is bared to the biting wind as he lies prone on the harsh wooden slats of the sea-soaked walkway, and her desperation overrides her fear as she runs unheedingly towards his fallen body.

Her fingers are pulling aside his clothing before she even realises she’s reached him, tearing at his many layers until there are no more layers left to remove. The slivered moon is almost too weak to fight the clouds to meet them, but it’s just enough for her to make out the entry wound; an underwhelming stain of dark red that even as she watches spreads its way across a chest already mottled in shades of puce and aubergine. She buries her gloved hands in his blood, leaning over his crumpled form as she desperately applies pressure to a chest that fails to rise.

The part of her that she thought she’d discarded in 1918 takes over, instructing her hands without any conscious engagement on her part as she does everything she can remember that might stop the bleeding. Her once-forgotten knowledge is telling her to talk to him, reminding her that speech is sometimes the only barrier that can be erected between a dying man and the place of rest he so desperately wants to reach. She tries, and she has so much she wants to say, so much she should have already said, but she finds the only thing she can do is parrot his name as he bleeds out below her.

She doesn’t hear the footsteps, but she feels the hands as they close around her own. She fights, but she’s already being pulled away, and a low voice is murmuring indistinguishable reassurances into her ear as the dock suddenly becomes alive with figures that block him from her sight. She watches as they carry him away, and she struggles against the fingers that form cuffs around her wrists as she takes in their slow, unhurried gait that tells her everything she refuses to believe. When the voice in her ear whispers a heartbroken apology, the solid form of its source behind her is the only thing that keeps her from sinking to the ground.

“I couldn’t save him.” She chokes out, and suddenly the murky scarlet that stains her hands is all too vibrant amongst the shadows that shroud the rest of her.

“It’s okay.” Says the voice, and the shaking of her hands slowly ceases as Jack loosens his grip on her wrists to gently, carefully, peel the sodden gloves from her fingers, “Phryne, it’s okay.”


End file.
